9/22/14

9/22/14

This week we had an amazing adventure! It wasn’t really that much fun but I will talk about that later. 

Well this week I will be making a year on the mission :) (I realized that this sentence makes absolutely no sense in English but I cannot remember how to actually phrase it.....so yeah) 

So about this adventure. It was Thursday and it was raining and the area where we are working is like an hour away from us so I was like Elder lets go ride a bus there today :) and so we went to the bus station and we asked the attendant which bus would take us to Bairro São Paulo.  She said Escalvados.  I looked at here and I was like are you sure because Escalvados is really far from where we work and she was like yup I am sure so we got on the bus and we went. Well long story short we ended up about 40 km or 25 miles from home. Like it passed where the bus usually turns around and then it kind of just kept on going and I was like elder we will just ride it out until it stops and it has to come back. Well that didn’t happen for some time and in the end after about 1.5 hours the money taker came back to ask us to buy more tickets to go forward and I told him our situation and he kind of looked really confused at us and then he said that it would be another $16 each to keep going and I was like “sir I don’t have that money.” So he pulled the cord and allowed us to get out and then gave us directions to walk back to the town we had just left so we walked for about 10 min until we got back and then I looked into my wallet and realized that to buy a passage back I was 1 real short so I started thinking....and praying. And then the idea came to me. We went to this store and we asked if we could buy something on the credit card and then have them put one more real on the price and give me the one real in trade. They said sure but that the limit to swipe the card was 10 real so I bought a bunch of junk and then we bought our passages and went back home. Just to give you a measure of time we left at about 2:30 and returned at 6:30 4 hours!!!!!!!!! But I was grateful for the idea and the clear head that I had. It was a bad situation (because we didn’t have cell phone service as well) but in the end it turned out just fine and I know that it happened for a reason but I just don’t know why. Anyways adventure time complete: P  I don’t want any more for the next year ;P

This week we had 5 investigators in church :) That was super duper awesome!!! I felt really good! The members really noticed...too bad this is the last week of the transfer and I am probably going to get transferred out :P

Um I don’t know if you got it yet but I sent a letter to you guys with my testimony. 

But after this one year on the mission I can say that I am truly not the same person. I have changed so much this past year and I know it has all been for the better. 

I know that this church is true :)

I love you!!

Love,

Elder Pachner

9/8/2014

This week it rained....and rained...and rained!!! But good things do come from rain!  

Another cool experience that happened this week is that we talked to our other investigator in the neighborhood são paulo and we taught her about the restoration of the church :) It was fun because she asked why every other church seemed to gang up against our church and say weird things that weren’t true. I was very straight with her and I was like do you remember the church in revelations?  The church of God that all the other churches were against....yeah we are that church :) It was good because she understood and this week she should be coming to church with us!!!!! :)

This week during district meeting I taught about accountability. It was a good topic and it was amazing to see how the Lord had helped me do all of the different trainings during district meeting so that they would all be linked in the end....I don’t know if that makes sense....I think it does. But yeah it was a really good training and I felt the spirit so it was what the Lord wanted me to do :)

One thing that I love about the mission is that you are constantly learning new ways to teach the same lesson. The other day we at this less actives house and I started teaching about the man who built his house on the rock and I was just teaching normally when the inspired question came to my brain....what does our house protect? Our house protects our family and that is the real reason why we must have our lives centered on Christ because if our families are centered on Christ no matter how hard the wind blows and the rains pound upon the house  it will  not fall and our families will be safe. I love that. It is so true and it was something that I had never thought of before and something that I had never heard of before and I know that it did not come from me but it truly came from the Holy Ghost who knew what would help the man at the time. It just amazes me at times because as of myself I knew almost nothing but with the spirit guiding my thoughts and words I can do everything.

I love you all so very much! And I am so grateful for all the work and effort that you guys put in so that our family can be safe and dry on top of the rock.

Love, Elder Pachner

September 1, 2014

Sept. 1, 2014       

So there was a huge bike rally this week here and that wasn’t to fun for us :P  You know it isn’t exactly the right place for the missionaries to go and hang out at :P

Well let me start off by telling you what cool things happened this week.........................................I drew a blank......

Okay I will just talk about the spiritual cool things. We went and taught our friends/investigators this week. We talked about families and temples. That was a fun lesson because I had to start with the bible.  I started with the tabernacle and explained how that was the temple and how God always asked his people to build temples for him because it was specifically His house. I explained about Solomon’s temple and then I went and talked about the difference between temples and churches.  I talked about the synagogues and how in the bible it talks about them and the temple as separate places. They understood that more or less and then elder William started talking about sealing and how extremely important that is. It was a cool experience because he started talking and they didn’t really understand and we talked about how God always instituted marriage and everything.  Elder William bore his testimony.  I then offered my testimony about when our family was sealed. I told them how we were all sealed together as a family so that Ashley and Jacob would always be my brother and sister. I bore my testimony that I know the church is true and that I KNOW that the sealing power brings families together and was ordained by God. Then we invited them to become baptized and then they started crying....they said that  they felt like they didn’t feel the change yet and that they were comfortable in their church but they didn’t want  this to end our friendship. They cried because they thought we weren’t ever going to come back but we told them that we weren’t there to convert them we were there because we love them and we want the same happiness as we feel for them!   Yeah that was like the best part of my week. This week we are going to teach about Joseph Smith.

It is going great with my companion. He is like a little brother to me or like a brother who is the same age because I don’t beat up on him but I still have a little bit more experience than him but at the same time I learn things from....It’s a complex relationship :P

Love you guys so much!!!

I am learning so much here and I promise I will return a much better person :)

I love you all,

Elder Pachner